The Omega Cage Read Free Page A

moved to the albino woman, put his arms around her and kissed her passionately, thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth. She responded mechanically, like a robot whose timing was a second slow. He felt the usual stab of disappointment, but he continued the kiss for a moment before breaking off and smiling, not letting her see how it bothered him. Some day, he told himself; some day she would come to him willingly. He loved her, and therefore, given enough time, she would learn to love him.
    "Who was that?" she asked. Casually, as if she cared not at all to know.
    "Nobody," Stark replied, feeling a pang of jealousy. She was an Exotic, he knew, and it was bred into her genes what she did, but he still hated the idea of her with any other man. Hated it. But at the same time he felt his passion rising at the thought. He grew hard, visualizing Juete with Maro.
    He took her hand and guided it to his crotch. She began to stroke him. After a moment, he saw the flush that showed she was excited too. Stark smiled. She might not love him, but he triggered her responses quickly enough.
    "Take off your clothes," he said. "I want to see you."
    Quickly, she complied. So pale, so beautiful, the thatch of downy white at her mons barely covering her labia— gods, he couldn't wait! Stark pulled her to him and lifted her from the floor, holding tightly to her buttocks as he pressed himself, still dressed, against her. Juete gasped at the fierceness of it, and he smiled into her white hair as he bit her neck.
    The cell they gave him was not as bad as some he had been in. It was three meters by three meters square, close to the same height. The front wall was finger-thick durasteel diamond-patterned mesh; the two side walls and ceiling were ferrofoam slabs with stacked-carbon stringer cord bracing; the back wall was of that strange material that made up large sections of the prison. Curious, he moved closer and examined it. It was oddly featureless and nonreflective, looking as much like the still surface of a midnight lake as metal. He touched it, then snatched his hand away. It was surprisingly cold.
    In one corner was a tiled squat, probably white once but now a dull gray. A single hole in the center of the slightly concave utility served as both excreta portal and drain; there was a showerhead mounted on the wall with a single button control.
    On the opposite side of the cell was a cot, chain-folded against the wall to allow more space. No sink, no mirror, but an open-faced cabinet held a towel, a tube of soap, another of depil, and a roll of tissue.
    Maro walked to the cabinet and pulled off several sheets of tissue. He then moved to the squat and dropped the pulpy paper into the hole. There came a slight grinding noise as the disposal unit kicked on. Standard prison issue.
    Anything small enough to be shoved down that hole wasn't going to stop it up, not with an industrial-grade grinder working in it. Welcome home, Dain. Well, at least he wasn't going to have a roommate to deal with.
    Abruptly, from across the corridor, Maro heard somebody yell, "New meat! Hey, copy all, new meat in the Redhead's dump!"
    He looked up to see a fat, droll-looking man of about fifty T.S. standing at the mesh of the cell across the corridor, staring at him.
    "The tag's Berque," the fat man said. "You got an unlucky dump, f'lo'man. The Redhead, he got cooked going over the wall this morning."
    "I saw it," Maro said.
    "Yeah?" The man who called himself Berque ran chubby fingers through his greasy brown hair. "So we all did, f'lo'man. The warden, he had it cast on full holoproj ten minutes after it went up."
    "I saw it coming in. Live."
    "Juicy, hey?"
    Maro turned away. The look on Berque's face made him want to gag. He'd met too many people—women as well as men—who enjoyed watching pain and death. He remembered what Stark had said: this place was full of killers. Some of them might have been dropped-shot as he had been, but most of them had, no doubt, enjoyed